Workforce Ready

Thanks to industry partnerships, engineering students are learning hands-on process control.

 

By Micaela Myers

 

What is process control? When family members and friends ask senior chemical engineering student Nicholas Gindulis of Casper, Wyo., he says, “Don’t let the refinery explode! I know that sounds comical, but it really is partly that, plus a lot of process optimization. You have a unit running that’s producing a product, and a process engineer can come in and improve efficiency using the latest technology.” 

Process control comes into play in a variety of industries, including minerals, energy and manufacturing. Engineers trained in process control are in high demand, which is what convinced Gindulis to add a process control minor. 

“My adviser mentioned to me that industry members came to the University of Wyoming and requested that they put this curriculum in place,” he says. “Wanting to find a job once I graduate, that was a big sign for me that said, ‘Hey, you need to do this.’”

 

Industry Investment
Genesis Alkali (now WE Soda), which operated the world’s largest natural soda ash mine and production site near Green River, Wyo., noticed a training gap between recent graduates and the skills needed for process control. The company turned to UW’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences to solve the problem. In response, UW launched the process control minor in 2020, followed by a process control lab. The Tier-1 Engineering Initiative and Genesis Alkali provided initial seed funding. In 2025, the energy company HF Sinclair stepped up with additional support to enhance process control education and workforce development in Wyoming. 

“We are proud to support this alignment with industry in Wyoming, which in turn brings a superior educational environment and job opportunities,” says E.G. Meyer Family Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Department Head Vladimir Alvarado. “The minor was built in frequent consultation with industry and resulted in a well-articulated program.”

 

The Advanced Process Control Lab, located in the Engineering Education and Research Building, provides students with cutting-edge technology and hands-on learning experiences that mirror real-world industrial operations.

“HF Sinclair is proud to support UW’s efforts to develop the next generation of skilled professionals,” says Sam Cooper, vice president and refinery manager of the Casper refinery. “By investing in cutting-edge education and hands-on training, we are strengthening the workforce pipeline and ensuring students gain the expertise needed to drive innovation and operational excellence in refining and industrial processing. This partnership reflects our commitment to both industry advancement and the communities we serve.”

Randy Pfeiffer, an associate professor of practice, says, “HF Sinclair’s involvement gives us an edge in providing a modern control environment for teaching in both the core chemical engineering program and our process control minor.”

For Gindulis, the hands-on approach kept him engaged. “The instrumentation and software are a good way to see how chemical engineers can manipulate physical principles and the equipment that they use to achieve it,” he says. 

In fact, the experience was so realistic that, when Gindulis started his internship with HF Sinclair in Rawlins last summer, he immediately spotted and solved a problem.

“With the knowledge that I’ve gained, I was able to diagnose what was wrong with the flow meter and then create a report on how to fix it,” he says. 

After the internship, HF Sinclair offered Gindulis a full-time job upon his graduation this May. 

“During the interview process, they noted they really wanted someone with that process control background,” he says. “The process control minor gave me an opportunity to get my foot in that door. It’s comforting to know that I have a job after school, and I can just focus on school throughout the semester.”

 

Simulating Real Life 
UW’s Advanced Process Control Lab is designed just like a real-life control room at a plant. To be effective in process control, you must react quickly and calmly. Simulations and hands-on learning allow students to do just that in a safe-but-realistic environment.

“Our simulation lab replicates a full-scale control room, so our students have a head start on understanding how those systems work,” Pfeiffer says. “It puts them in a wonderful position to jump right in and be productive when they start their first job.”

The lab also allows students to use industry hardware. 

“If you don’t know what an actuator is in real life, it makes a huge difference,” Avarado says. 

The simulations give students experience with a variety of environments. 

“We can give students — from their second year all the way up to their fourth year — experiences in dynamic simulation of individual units and linked units in a process using enterprise-grade software from Siemens, Honeywell and HF Sinclair,” says process control and instrumentation minor Coordinator Ian Hammontree. “These include dynamic simulation of individual units, including heat exchangers, distillation towers and tank systems, and large connected processes such as an oil refinery and a styrene production plant.”

The minor includes a hardware course, a software course and a capstone course in which students design process control systems for linked processes. These processes include sensing, transmission, final control elements and controllers.

The lab is open to more than just those students in the process control minor — all chemical engineering students can experience the lab. 

“We have a saying internally that process control makes you a better process engineer,” Alvarado says. “All chemical engineers are process engineers.”

The lab — combined with a strong focus on internships — makes UW students ready to hit the ground running in their future careers. 

“Students can earn credit toward the minor by working in a process control internship,” Hammontree says. “Students have worked with companies like WE Soda, HF Sinclair, DISA Technologies and more.”

The team plans to continue building connections with industry across the state to expand offerings. 

Alvarado says, “We are offering students fully immersive experiential learning.”